Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) Degree

The curriculum in the DO program was designed to address key recommendations from the 2010Carnegie Report, Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency, which is an important review of the methods and practices of medical education over the last 100 years. A state-of-the-art learning environment, our integrated competency based curriculum, and focus on student learning has been designed to prepare the next generation of physicians to have successful careers in all areas of medicine.

As evidence that MU-COM's innovative curriculum is preparing medical students for successful careers in the health care profession, as of May 1, 2017, MU-COM's first-time pass rate for COMLEX Level 1 was 94.81% and COMLEX Level 2 was 90.23%. As of April 17, 2017, the DO Class of 2017 residency match rate was 99.2%. More information will be presented in the near future.

What does this all mean to you?

First and foremost, the curriculum was developed to focus on your learning. Biomedical courses have a clinical basis, giving you the understanding of how to integrate the scientific information into patient care and treatment. A variety of teaching methods including lectures, laboratories, case-based seminars, small group learning, flipped classrooms, podcasts, problem-based learning, team-based learning, and early clinical experiences give you a unique opportunity to master your understanding of basic sciences.

Clinical courses occur in each of the four semesters in years one and two. They include hands-on skills laboratory and case-based problem-solving sessions and are integrated with the concurrent biomedical science courses.

Once completing the first two years of biomedical sciences and clinical skills courses, you’ll begin rotating through CORE rotations through the third and fourth year. During the third year you will rotate through a number of primary care and specialty care clinical settings including family medicine, internal medicine, general surgery, radiology, and multiple others in rural, suburban, and urban environments. The first portion of the fourth year will be spent completing the CORE rotations, while the nearly 5 months remaining will be spent on elective rotations, which give you an opportunity to rotate at hospitals where you’d like to complete a residency. It will also give you many opportunities to complete specialty, sub-specialty, and/or clinical internship rotations.

All of this equates to a competent and compassionate osteopathic physician who is prepared to handle the rigors of being a leader in the osteopathic community.

Pre-Clinical Years 1-2

Hospitals and other healthcare employers are seeking physicians who have the ability to work in an ever changing healthcare environment. MU-COM offers a uniquely integrated and team-based approach to the medical training curriculum by integrating didactic and clinical competencies, offering inter-professional education with nursing students, including a clinical basis to biomedical science courses, and providing you with clinical experiences in your first and second year of medical school.

Courses are taught by our award winning faculty. Biomedical and clinical faculty will help you obtain the knowledge needed to successfully treat the root cause of a disease, but also show the compassion and patient centered approaches central to osteopathic medicine. They will also help you attain the foundation to be highly successful during your clinical rotations in years three and four.

To help achieve this understanding, faculty will help you understand the systems and structures of the human body in our state-of-the-art anatomy lab, better understand how structure and function work together, develop your hands into treatment instruments by utilizing our OMM lab, as well as teach you examination procedures using our simulation and examination rooms.

Clinical Year 3

This is the CORE year for clinical training. The purpose of the third year is to provide the student with a broad exposure to areas of medicine that represent most of the areas that will be addressed in residencies and practice. It also provides some opportunities to select electives that amplify one or two of the areas in the CORE the student is most interested.

There are seven areas that make up the CORE content of the third year—family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, emergency medicine, and psychiatry. Family medicine, emergency medicine and internal medicine are eight weeks and all the others are four week rotations. Family medicine and emergency medicine have been split into a third and a fourth year rotation. Radiology has been included as a skill set, along with ortho/sports medicine.

Most of the third year rotations will take place at one of our clinical partners, but there will be opportunities for third year students to explore other educational environments.

Sample Rotation Schedule

Clinical Year 4

In the fourth and final year, there are also some required rotations that emphasize the primary care aspects of the curriculum. The rotations expose students to the practice of medicine outside of an urban setting. There are required rotations in rural medicine and critical access hospitals which will be linked for a total of eight weeks, and the fourth year component to family medicine and emergency medicine as well as a Public Health rotation.

For the remainder of the fourth year the student has been given the opportunity to work with faculty to develop his/her own interests with an eye toward doing interview rotations with residency programs in areas where the student may want to do residency training. Many of the rotations will take place at one of our clinical partners, but a list of electives and potential sites will be provided.

The fourth year curriculum is also scheduled in a manner that best accommodates interview rotations and other requirements needed for graduation and licensing exams.